Buying a Bass

I'm looking to buy a new bass, however in Cyprus there are no shops which sell double basses. I could fly to Greece, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Germany etc to try some basses and hopefully find one I like.

I'm just wondering, would it be possible to ship a bass from any of those countries to Cyprus? Is it safe?

Also, since the USA uses dollars, finding a good used bass might come out really cheap for me, as the dollar/euro conversion benefits me. Would it be possible to ship a bass from the states? Or too risky/expensive?

The other issue is, there is no luthier in Cyprus. On my bass I fixed most of the issues myself, but there are definitely things that I have no knowledge on how to fix them. So this brings up the question of ply vs solid. The weather is also very dry and humid here, so maybe a ply/hybrid is better? I really want to buy a bass I'll be happy with. I only play straight ahead Jazz music, and I prefer to use gut strings. On the bass I have now, I think the gut strings caused a lot of buzzing problems.

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated. If you could also include a couple of shops in Europe I could check out that would be great.